On My Block: The 2009 National Book Festival

Two weekends ago we headed for DC to attend the 9th annual National Book Festival to meet our favorite author, Nicholas Sparks, and for his book signing.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Nicholas Sparks before, he is the writer and New York Times best seller of the books, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, and Nights in Rodanthe. He’s written over a dozen books with most of them featured on the New York Times best seller, and four of his books (those mentioned) are already movie motion pictures, while two more are set for release in 2010, and another is in production. His books are on fictional love stories that revolve around the drama or tragedy of two individuals with characters ranging from ages that of 17-50. The stories and movies are both beautiful and sad, enough to bring up tears in even the toughest soul.

The book festival which is sponsored by the Library of Congress is held on the National Mall located between the National Monument and The Capital. Every year, a list of authors from different categories are put and brought together for book signing and a 30 minute speech or reading. The event is free and open to the public. This year’s list included over 70 author’s with big names like, Judy Blume, Lois Lowry, James Patterson, Paula Deen, Nicholas Sparks, and John Irving. This year's festival drew a crowd of over 130,000 people.

Nicholas Sparks drew a big crowd with long lines, and luckily we arrived early enough to be in the first line. We have to admit, we were disappointed in Sparks for only signing his latest book, The Last Song, meaning if you didn’t have it before arriving to the festival you had to buy it at the book sale pavilion. In this case it was us and other upset fans. No word on whether that was Sparks decision or not, but to whoever it was, it was a greedy move. Some authors signed their past works and up to 2 books per person.

One side facing The Capital.